Perhaps no other great modern architect has been linked to a native country as closely as Alvar Aalto, whose love of Finland flows into his quasi-organic forms, ranging from such buildings as the Baker House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to his Savoy vase and bent-plywood stacking stools. Focusing on the architect’s own writings and library, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen proposes a different interpretation of Aalto’s oeuvre, finding it to be a deeply thoughtful response to his intellectual and cultural milieu—especially to Finland’s political upheaval following independence from Russia in 1917. In more than 120 illustrations, this book surveys the drawings, sculptures, designs, and montages of this modernist icon, many of them rarely published.